get out the pit.”
“And why would you want to ascertain that information?” he snapped, unmoved by my quest for knowledge.
“Peach pits contain cyanide; everyone knows that. Because the peach compote contained an organic cyanide compound, it does seem probable that the pits are implicated-if they’re not impossible to extract.”
“Not everyone knows the chemical structure of peach pits. When did you chance upon it? High school chemistry-or more recently?”
Lacking an acceptable answer, I ignored the remark and smashed the seed with a mighty blow. It bounced into a pile of dried leaves. “Damn, this is harder than it looks,” I said as I crawled across the walk and started to dig through the leaves.
Peter leaned over and picked up the peach pit. “Let me try,” he said in a grudging voice-since he hadn’t thought up the brilliant experiment.
I handed him the hammer and sat back to watch him smash the seed. His expression was enigmatic, to say the least, but his single blow was forceful enough to shatter the outside covering and expose an almond-shaped pit. He studied it for a second, then handed it to me. “It isn’t difficult. Anyone could do it.”
“Not little old ladies with tremulous hands and poor eyesight,” I said. “It takes the male touch to pulverize an innocent pit. We of the opposite persuasion lack the temperament. I really can’t see delicate Miss Parchester on her hands and knees on the sidewalk, smashing peach seeds to collect the pits.”
“Ah, Miss Parchester. Couldn’t you have told me where she was-before she disappeared? You knew damn well that I wanted to question her, Claire. The fact that you knowingly failed to tell me her whereabouts borders on a felony.”
As Mexico borders on France. “I felt responsible for her,’ I admitted in a wonderfully contrite voice. “I thought I could clear things up before you dragged her to the station to book her.”
“But instead you lost her. Now she’s playing Miss Woodward-Bernstein, and liable to dig herself into more trouble. If we’d had her tucked away in a cell, she couldn’t have been a suspect in the custodian’s murder. But of course she’s trotting around town, no doubt with a purse full of compote and peach pits, and might have visited the high school during the funeral. I’ve issued a warrant. Good work, Ms. Malloy.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Rosen.” I snatched up the hammer, put the pit in my pocket, and started for the house. “I’ll give you a call when I determine who really killed Weiss and Pitts. In the meantime I have to wait for an important call.”
“I have to take your statement. Now.”
I faltered in midstomp. “No more sarcasm. I confuse it with the warm glow that comes from impacted wisdom teeth.”
We went upstairs. He took my statement, then apologized and made amends. I accepted the apology, allowed amends, and generally forgave him for his boorish behavior. But I then shooed him away, worried that Caron might call while he was there. An apology was one thing, Miss Parchester another. And I was going to clear her name.
EIGHT
Caron’s vigilance was not rewarded. She complained about it straight through dinner, then retreated to her room to sulk in solitude when I failed to offer adequate sympathy. I spent the night envisioning Miss Parchester supine in a pond or ditch, her slippers a-twitch in her death throes. It did nothing to contribute to sleep, and I was not in a jolly mood the next morning as I arrived at what threatened to become my permanent classroom. I longed for the Book Depot, the jackhammer, my crowded office, the antiquated cash register with the sticky drawer, and the rows and rows of lovely books. It didn’t do a damn bit of good.
Farberville High School had not closed its doors to commemorate the death of a custodian. During the morning announcements, Miss Don assigned a few terse words to the tragic loss of an employee, warned the students not to speak with reporters, and went right on to the homecoming festivities-the very mention of which gave me goose bumps. I went right on to the lounge.
There were traces of fingerprint powder on the table and a lingering aroma that someone had attempted to overpower with pine-scented air freshener. I felt as if I’d been teleported to Maine. I contemplated a search for the other lounge, which to my knowledge was not yet a breeding ground for corpses, then reminded myself that I would learn nothing there. I waded through the pine cones and poured myself a cup of coffee.
Paula Hart came into the lounge. After a warm smile of greeting, she started for the ladies room, then stopped and shook her head ruefully. “I can’t do it,” she said with a small, deprecatory laugh. “I intended to be quite sensible about it, since the other faculty lounge is so far. But I can’t make myself go in there-not after what happened to poor Pitts.”
“You’re the only person who’s apt to be distressed by Pitts’s death,” I said. “Everyone else will celebrate-in a decorous manner, of course.
“He was a sad little man. He did so want to be a part of the staff, but he simply did not fit in with us. No education, a certain lack of-of physical fastidiousness, an inclination to grovel that encouraged certain people to ridicule him without mercy. All those rumors about him, based on student gossip, which can be fanciful. Heaven knows they come up with some wild ideas at times. The others were ready to lynch him, but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I suppose I felt sorry for him.”
It occurred to me that she and her coach had entered the lounge after the discussion of Pitts’s peepery. I asked her if she knew about the spy hole in the ladies room.
“Evelyn told me. I wish I knew how long the hole had been there. I’d like to think he wasn’t watching me adjust my panty hose every morning, but we’ll never find out.” She made a face. “It is awful, isn’t it? Being spied on through a nasty hole in the wall
“He was also privy to conversations when the door was open, I told her, making the same face but with a more mature set of wrinkles. “I guess he overheard quite a lot of personal conversations.”
She fluttered a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I don’t think he could hear anything, do you? Even with the door open, it’s a thick wall and there’s always noise in the halls.”
“Let’s test the hypothesis,” I said, enamored of the idea of yet another Nobel-level experiment, this time in acoustics. I’ll go in his closet and put my ear to the wall. You take the tape off the hole, then go into the lounge and talk. We’ll find out if he could have heard anything.”
“What shall I say?”
“Anything. Your name and address. The alphabet.”
She looked doubtful, but she stayed in the middle of the room. I went around the corner and through the storage room to the private sanctum. There were signs the police had examined the room, and I wondered if’ they’d found the alleged stash of illegal substances. I wryly noted a collection of empty whiskey bottles. Pitts would have done better to stick with his own brand.
I located the hole and put my ear to it, feeling rather sleazy even though I was conducting research for a good cause. I heard Paula chanting the alphabet as if she were inches away. Acoustical miracles, I supposed. Paula broke off in the middle of
“Hi, Jerry,” she said brightly.
“Why are you in the middle of the room reciting the alphabet?” he asked, not unreasonably.
I could almost hear the flutter of her hands. Our Miss Hart was not, to her credit, an accomplished liar, but it seemed she couldn’t bring herself to expose me. Or maybe the truth was too silly for her true love to be saddled with.
“For a typing test,” she gasped. “Third period. I’m going to time them on the alphabet.”
“And you’re not sure you remember it?” He chuckled at her, then cut off her flutters with what I presumed was a kiss. “Listen, my darling, I’ve got to find that blasted transcript before the police do. No, don’t interrupt, please. If the police stumble onto it, they’ll think I had a motive to murder Weiss. Honey, let me finish. I doubt it’s in the regular file; Weiss wanted to dangle it over my head like a damned sword before he made it public. Maybe it’s hidden in his-what?”
There was a long silence, punctuated by earnest whispers and a low growl. The door of the ladies room slammed shut, thus leaving the location of the mysterious transcript unspecified and my left eardrum aquiver in tympanic shock. I felt fairly sure Jerry wasn’t going to offer further details, no matter how nicely I asked.
I was still listening to chimes in my head when I heard a noise through the hole. I waited a few minutes, then leaned against the wall once more, prepared to sacrifice scrupulosity and dignity in exchange for information. A toilet flushed, water ran in the sink, and the door was opened-and left ajar. Someone more considerate than the coach was in the lounge. Footsteps, the clink of the coffee pot against a mug, more footsteps. I decided the odds on a killer admitting all, particularly to a room devoid of an audience, were nil to none, and I was on the verge of abandoning my post when someone laughed.
“How’s your student teacher faring in the face of all this mayhem?” Sherwood said. “is she more non corn pas menus than usual?”
“I suspect she’ll flee back to the college to find another major.” Evelyn sounded as if such flight held appeal. “The rest of us will end up with
“Surely you are not devastated by the loss of our factotum, our worthless dogsbody? We’ll get a replacement, and we’ll be better off for it, as will the building and the ignoble savages. By the way, I have arrived at a startling insight, Evelyn-one that warrants serious cogitation. It involves Pitts’s vile habit of eavesdropping through that little hole. It must have been the precise size to accommodate his mind-which contradicted the tenet that
I did not take it personally.
“What do you mean, Sherwood?” said Evelyn. “And get to the point without any incomprehensible asides, please. The first-period bell is going to ring any minute.”
“it seems to me that certain information conveyed in confidence wormed its way upstairs to the domain of our resident Zeus. it has now been demonstrated that the walls have ears- perhaps they also have mouths.”
“I understand your Latin better. What, Sherwood?”
“Among his other virtues, Pitts must have been a snitch. You heard Weiss’s crack about the library, Evelyn, and only you and I knew about that matter. How else could he have learned of that absurd accusation, unless Pitts overheard our conversation and tattled to his boss?”
I willed him to explain. He didn’t.
“That may be,” Evelyn said, “but it’s irrelevant now. Weiss and Pitts are both dead, so it doesn’t matter what either of them heard. It’s very convenient for you, isn’t it?”
